Did the Crusaders say anything about hamsters?

by thedoogster

Everyone knows that the friendly hamsters we now keep as pets come from the Middle East. Particularly the parts of the Middle East (like Syria) where the Crusaders went.

Did the Crusaders (or the people of Outremer) say anything about the hamsters there?

J-Force

Sadly not.

Many crusade sources, and accounts written by those living in Outremer, like to talk about the wildlife. For example, the Third Crusade ran into trouble when it encamped near a network of tarantula nests:

As each night approached a sort of little vermin threatened them. They crawl in swarms along the ground giving the most horrible stabs and are popularly called ‘tarantulas’. By day they did no harm; but as night came on they would make an assault armed with very irritating stings. Anyone they stung immediately swelled up with the raging poison and was in terrible agony, although the noblemen and the more wealthy eased the swelling and reduced the pain by immediately applying ‘theriaca’, which was an effective antidote. At last the more vigilant noticed that a loud noise would make the pestilential vermin run away. So when the tarantulas approached, they would begin to make an enormous bang and clatter, each of them banging and beating on shields and helmets, stools and boards, casks, flasks, basins, plates and cooking pots, and any appliance or item of furniture suitable for making a noise which came to hand, since the racket drove the vermin away.

But it is unlikely that hamsters, if encountered by crusaders, were deemed noteworthy. Hamsters were not an exotic animal, and unlike tarantulas did not come with the novelty of a venomous bite. Although most people are familiar with the Syrian hamster as a pet, there are European hamster populations in much of central and eastern Europe. The word 'hamster' comes from the German word 'hamstern' meaning 'to hoard'. (there are actually several possible origins for the English word 'hamster') However, the European hamster is aggressive and has resisted all attempts to domesticate it. They've been hunted as pest control to prevent them eating seeds and ruining harvests. The European hamster fills a similar ecological niche as rats - not noteworthy to any German crusader who may have seen a Syrian one.

Not that a German crusader was likely to find one. Although hamsters are a popular household pet, the Syrian hamster is very rare in the wild. Although it is hard to judge how many wild Syrian hamsters there are, it is unlikely to be more than a thousand. Even before human encroachment on their habitats, they were a rare animal. The most thorough book on animals in the medieval Middle East - Mamluks and Animals: Veterinary Medicine in Medieval Islam by Emilie Savage-Smith - makes no mention at all of hamsters. It seems they were only properly 'discovered' in the early modern period and were only captured for study in 1930. Obviously, local farmers and hunters would have known about them for the entirety of history - and had apparently called them the Arabic word for "saddlebags" - but nobody had actually been able to capture one for study until less than a century ago. Since then, truly wild Syrian hamsters (as opposed to escaped pets) have only been found a few times. They're elusive little fluffballs.

So no, neither crusaders or the people of Outremer say anything about hamsters. This may be because they just weren't noteworthy, but more probably because the wild population of Syrian hamsters has always been very small and the odds of a crusader finding one - let alone having the chance to study it and write down its characteristics - are extremely low.